How to get tons more traffic for your nonprofit blog

Mazarine Treyz, with The Wild Woman’s Guide to Fundraising and The Wild Woman’s Guide to Social Media

When I first started blogging to build an audience for my book, I read Yaro Starak’s blog. He said that the way he got tons of website visitors and built up his traffic was by commenting on 10 blogs per night. So in 2010, that is what I did. I got tons of traffic and tons of sales when my book came out.

Over the years that I’ve been doing this, I’ve come to realize that commenting is an art. You don’t want to make a spam comment. You want to make something useful, something that helps people and leads them to even more helpful resources.

The idea behind commenting is simple. You comment to help the blog owner learn about your expertise, you comment to build interesting discussions, and to help people who read the blog learn more about your knowledge. Then you lead them back to your website to learn more about what you do.

Commenting for your nonprofit means that you’ll get more traffic, which will lead to more support, and more actions, and eventually more donations.

As of this writing, I have 31,000 monthly readers, 4,600 enewsletter subscribers, 3,400 twitter followers, and 500+ LinkedIn followers. I’ve been asked to speak at conferences, and given webinars to thousands of people. I’ve gotten government contracts to teach social media to the City of Austin, National SBA Small Business Week, the Oregon SBDC and many others. I’d love to teach you how I did it.

Comments

Mazarine- Thank you for all of your well thought out insightful advice. I’m finding through poking through your website that I have found helpful hints that can benefit our non-profit immensely. I look forward to reading your books so that we will be well heeled to take our organization to the next level. Happy New Year.

Thank you Leiza, your nonprofit is doing much needed work for kids with cancer. I used to work in the pediatric oncology ward at MassGeneral Hospital for Children, and I know this work can be both draining and exhilarating.

Definitely agree that commenting for the sake of commenting isn’t productive. But a thoughtful, relevant comment can be a great way to drive traffic and establish connections. People often cite social media as a great opportunity to connect with thought leaders, but I think commenting on blogs can be an effective route to explore as well.